Mostly about the peculiar Japanese practice of dying with honor, Beat Takeshi’s only (barely) American film is alternately fascinating and frustrating. In fact, it’s almost fascinating in spite of its inscrutability. In the film’s second to last scene (but the last one featuring Takeshi’s Aniki), a roadside diner owner tells Aniki that the Japanese are just so damn inscrutable. And, since this film is about the differences between American and Japanese culture, and is therefore somewhat inscrutable to this American, that’s a particularly apt thing to hear right before Aniki buys it.
There’s also the possibility that this film is a World War II allegory. Considering that the western theater of that war is the only large scale interaction America and Japan have ever had, it’s no surprise that both cultures should have wildly incorrect views about the other. When Americans think of the yakuza, they think about the heinous and terrible traditions (depicted in the film at hand) and the wanton violence they seem to mete out at every turn. Similarly, it would appear, from watching this film, that the Japanese think of our mafia in mostly the same way. Each criminal organization is thought of by the other culture as being ruthless, extraordinarily violent and basically institutionally insane.
The parallels with World War II are self-evident. For instance, is there an American alive that can understand why in the holy hell a grown man would fly an airplane into a destroyer or building or whatever as the kamikaze Japanese pilots of WWII did so often? Is there any Japanese person who can understand how a grown man can disgrace himself in public then carry on as if he had done nothing shameful? Add to this the fact that the propaganda machines of war were cranking out lies as fast as they could. The Japanese people were told that the Americans, when they invaded, wouldn’t stop until ever last person on the island was dead. From an American point of view this is absurd. But then, of course, we did kill millions of their citizens, innocent people mostly, in a single afternoon.
Thus, in Brother, we have the Japanese yakuza in America going up against the mafia only to find that not only are they outmatched but they're all marked for death. And as this plays out over the last twenty minutes of the film, it certainly seems awfully similar to how the Japanese must have felt at the end of World War II.
The real question, though, is what point does all this serve? Why go to the trouble to create this allegory in the first place since it doesn’t lend itself to a particularly realistic story? The answer just might be that by showing a culture how other peoples of the world see it, it might be hoped that that culture will learn something about the image it conveys to the world.
